As a child I always remember receiving grades and taking comprehensive tests. We were trained like robots, had to act a certain way, and achieve goals at the cost of your other peers. Our parents introduce us to this subculture of structured learning. It’s a shame that education can depend on your zip code and socio economic status but unfortunately that’s how the system is set up. Generally, public schooling tends to be better in more wealthy neighborhoods, ultimately better preparing students with the proper resources and attention needed for a successful transition into upper level academia. In grade school, I remember being graded and that was when I first realized I had to get good grades to achieve in school. In my opinion, grades should not exist for students at a very young age. It can be demoralizing and ultimately take away from the child’s progress and retention of knowledge because they are too worried about making good grades.
School has become a regurgitation of information. We are taught and then we are simply tested on what we learned. This is successful if you are trying to weed out students out of a certain field but it does not challenge the mind to think in a critical manner. As one progresses through the schooling system, it becomes obvious who has motivation and who is there because their parents forced them to go to school. A lot of this has to do with the discipline and examples taught in the household. It’s interesting to observe how parents rely on teachers to do their jobs. Not only do they expect to teach them but also parent them.
When I began high school I was an extremely introverted individual and much had to do with the fact that I attended a private institution. Although I received a great education, I decided to transfer into one of the largest public schools in the area. By doing so, I was challenged and realized that being at the top of the class was not going to be easy. In addition, I was introduced into a multicultural blend that was intimidating at first. Now looking back, this transition shaped me into the person I am today. In the process of discovering others, I was able to discover myself. Having so many different backgrounds surrounding you, I came to realize that others are encountering the same or even worse problems than me. Although not all the exposure was positive, it allowed me to experience real world scenarios and not live a falsely cropped representation of reality.
School has become a regurgitation of information. We are taught and then we are simply tested on what we learned. This is successful if you are trying to weed out students out of a certain field but it does not challenge the mind to think in a critical manner. As one progresses through the schooling system, it becomes obvious who has motivation and who is there because their parents forced them to go to school. A lot of this has to do with the discipline and examples taught in the household. It’s interesting to observe how parents rely on teachers to do their jobs. Not only do they expect to teach them but also parent them.
When I began high school I was an extremely introverted individual and much had to do with the fact that I attended a private institution. Although I received a great education, I decided to transfer into one of the largest public schools in the area. By doing so, I was challenged and realized that being at the top of the class was not going to be easy. In addition, I was introduced into a multicultural blend that was intimidating at first. Now looking back, this transition shaped me into the person I am today. In the process of discovering others, I was able to discover myself. Having so many different backgrounds surrounding you, I came to realize that others are encountering the same or even worse problems than me. Although not all the exposure was positive, it allowed me to experience real world scenarios and not live a falsely cropped representation of reality.
I chose to show a short clip from Waiting for Superman because this movie follows a handful of students through the education sysytem that inhibits rather than encourage academic growth. The movie makes the statement that theses kids are more than a statistic...they have names.
Our education process can be compared to that of the short film People in Order that we watched in class. In one of the videos we are shown people from all ages instructed to do a simple task (play a drum). It’s interesting to see that even the oldest people were given the same exact rules as the youngest participants. Similar to the schooling system, it doesn’t matter how old you are, the same rules are given year after year. Although they were all asked to do the same task, age and skill level differed. This represents the weed out system that grades have brought to the system. From a young age we are given grades as means of proving that we can remember what we are taught. Grades create a subjective sense of measuring success, ultimately creating competition and envy amongst peers. The steady beat throughout the video symbolizes the authoritative figure that does not allow us to beat the education system.
